Ask HN: Why is no one making FILE_ID.DIZ anymore?

I wanted to be able to practice Spanish vocab while on my commute to work so I created YapCards. It's an iOS app focused on making flashcard studying hands-free & efficient. Like Anki, but entirely spoken.

You choose a list to practice, the app reads the prompt out loud (e.g. "What charge does a proton have?"), & you respond by voice. YapCards uses AI to evaluate your response & provide feedback.

Some key features: Voice-only practice (no need to look at your screen)

AI evaluation & feedback

Practice publicly available lists or upload your own excel lists. Publish your lists for others to use

Uses the SM2 algorithm to manage repetition scheduling

Tech stack includes Swift, Firebase, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, and OpenAI (trying various models)

I’d love feedback from fellow learners, developers, or anyone interested in voice interfaces. Especially if you’ve built language tools before — I’m curious about what would make this more useful or sticky. Thoughts around voice recognition / silence detection, reducing latency, and improving AI feedback greatly appreciated!

Thanks for taking a look.

Comments (5)

androng · 7h ago

The first thing I think and my friends think when trying to learn from AI is that it is fallible. ie it makes mistakes and the student has no way of knowing its wrong. GPT 3.5 made grammar mistakes when explaining simple Japanese sentences to me in English. even the CEO of Duolingo said that AI will have "small hits to quality" https://www.linkedin.com/posts/duolingo_below-is-an-all-hand... and my housemate said that the japanese he gets from ChatGPT 4o is awkward. (I told him to prompt it in Japanese instead of English and he said the result was a lot better)

If trying to learn a language with only audio I recommend an AI-free audio podcast https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/coffeebreakspanish/

DonEsquire · 7h ago

Great points (and appreciate the coffeebreak recommendation!). Totally agree that the AI evaluation has plenty of inconsistency and errors.

I do want to clarify - it is more like audio only practice for digital flashcards. Meaning the prompt & response are both expected to be defined ahead of time. That way, GPT (as of today), is instructed to evaluate the semantic meaning of the user's response compared to the correct response.

android521 · 4h ago

should have a demo video

bigyabai · 7h ago

What made you choose a native app instead of something more accessible like a website?

DonEsquire · 7h ago

My use case was to have my phone quiz me while I'm driving to work, so simplicity / reduced friction to use when on the go. 1 tap to open the app, 1 tap to select the content (list I want to practice), & 1 tap to start the session.

Surely a website would open this up to way more ppl. Honestly never even thought of that...

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Show HN: YapCards (iOS) – Voice-driven flashcards with AI feedback

Comments (5)